The House on Dorchester Hill

By
Francis Russell /
March 12, 1986

I That house on Dorchester Hill is vacant still since we moved away in May. For all I care let it stand there in the June heat with its walk of cracked concrete and the plantain-spotted yard the children trampled hard. If I never see it again, it will be all too soon. II That house on Dorchester Hill, is it standing still? I do not much care, yet at times I find myself recalling where from my bedroom window I could see the Bellevue water tower beyond New Calvary Cemetery, and the scarlet sun-ball sinking, I thinking that beyond the tower and the ending day and Dorchester Hill some magic lay.

Who lives in the house now? I wish I knew. III That house on Dorchester Hill I had almost forgotten until so many years later, with an intrusive shock the memory came back of the round oak table with the lion feet under the gas light, and the Morris chair in the parlor corner, and the Hallet &amp; Davis upright piano with the music from ``Martha,'' and behind the kitchen the dahlia plot where we buried Timmy, our Maltese cat.

Unless I remember it still, no one else will. IV That house on Dorchester Hill, I think of it still, house so long gone. If I might have one more May morning, just one, to walk down the cracked concrete walk and pause at the hydrangea bush and turn and look at the house and the oval glass in the front door and that gable window on the second floor where I watched the sun-ball descending behind the Bellevue water tower at the day's ending.